The Beer-hemoth

You like that? I stole the title idea from Slick.

As mentioned over at Mmmm, Burgers, I attended the First Annual Brattleboro Brewers Festival yesterday with generally positive results. Back in the day, I would have had to eat a burger and cram all 8 of these beer reviews into a burger post, but now that I write for the wildly successful Mmmm, Opinions, I can focus on what's important: the beer. I tried 8 new varieties, and I wrote myself some short notes on each one. Hopefully I can figure out what I meant, because I was trying to be concise. Unfortunately, this appears to have resulted in me reviewing beers using a system of exclamation points. I have to assume that I was implying a difference between "good," "good!," and "good!!" I am an idiot.

I also got a bunch of free, cheap stuff like coasters, bumper stickers, stickers for things other than bumpers and pins. I also bought a half-priced t-shirt and a couple pint glasses. That stuff will all end up either adorning the walls of Burger Bros (trademark pending) or the man-room in my future house.

I started off with McNeill's Oatmeal Stout. I am a pretty big fan of stouts, especially the oatmeal ones, so I wanted to make my first beer one that I was fairly confident I would enjoy. And I was right. My review yesterday was "good!", which is positive. Kathryn, of course, did not enjoy it, because she doesn't care for the stout variety of beer. I should have written down what she was drinking, because I tried a few of hers that were pretty good too. Maybe she could write a guest post.

I then moved on to Element Brewing Company Dark Matter. This was my favorite beer of the day. It was a black ale, which I don't think I have ever tried before. Let the record show that it was delicious. Yesterday's review of this beer was "good!!", which I believe is the highest review given. More importantly, Element is located in Millers Falls, which is like 3 inches away from Kathryn on this random map I am looking at. I have no idea what the scale is, but it's not far. Brewery tour!!

The third beer of the day was Sorachi Ace from Brooklyn Brewery. Eh, it was ok. That's actually the review I gave it yesterday. It tasted like a less terrible Belgian ale with a little lemony flavor. There wasn't anything that was super about it, but there wasn't anything terrible about it. Also, this was the point in the day where we saw the first pregnant woman. Walking around a brewers festival. Drinking beer. That's just wrong. To paraphrase Knocked Up, we can't have a bunch of pregnant bitches running around the festival; that's crazy.

At this point, I was hungry, so I went and got a Beer Braised Beef Burrito from the Vermont Country Deli because it sounded good and I wanted to eat something alliterative. I was happy with my choice. Much happier than with the burger that was coming up later.

Beer number 4 was High & Mighty Beer Co.'s Two-Headed Beast. This was a chocolate stout, which sounded like it was going to be awesome, but just ended up being good. It was also a little too sweet for me. Do you remember that chocolate soda that they used to have? I think it was from either Polar or Adirondack? This beer was sort of like that.

I followed up my dessert with a Star Island Single from Smuttynose. It was a pretty good ale with something citrusy going on. I would probably drink a few of them with a meal, as it went down smoothly. Plus, Smuttynose is fun to say.

From there, it was back to the stouts with Paper City Brewery's Fogbuster. It was a very tasty coffee stout, which apparently comes from right nearby in Holyoke. It turns out that there are a lot of little breweries out in western Mass. Who knew? I liked the beer a lot, but I think it was a little too strong in the coffee taste. I prefer the Coffeehouse Porter from BBC because it's a bit more restrained in the coffee area. Also, I find it interesting that I like coffee stout, coffee ice cream, coffeecake, Dunkin Donuts coffee rolls, etc., but I don't like actual coffee.

Somewhere during those 3 beers, we saw a second pregnant lady. I don't think that this one was drinking though, but still. This is the type of event you have to give up once you make the mistake of getting pregnant. You can already predict the type of kids these people are going to have, which is the kind that make people want to quit teaching.

My next beer was the low point of the day. A random dude let me try the Vermonster from Rock Art Brewery, and it was pretty good but not great. And yes, I will try random people's beers. You're reading a post from a guy who let some random dude whose sister Dave was trying to get with buy a him beer at the Salty Dog after grabbing his ass. True story. (I realize that the story is not very clear there. Just ask me sometime and I will give you the whole tale.) And if that's not going to stop me from accepting free beer, then pretty much nothing is.

Since I had already tasted the Vermonster, I decided to have the Ridge Runner from the same brewery. Oh, past Jon, if only you knew what present Jon knows. That thing was weird tasting, and not very good. What a waste of a drink ticket. Let's move on.

My last beer of the day was Switchback Red Roasted Ale. This was a great beer to end the festival on. Red ales are often hit-or-miss with me, but this one was a hit. A couple of the people we were with started off with it, so it already had some positive reviews by the time I made my way over to that particular tent. This will be one of the beers featured in the $2.50 Beer of the Month special at Burger Bros whenever that fantasy becomes a reality. Anyone have some extra capital lying around?

After all those beers, I was kind of hungry again, so I got a bowl of turkey chili, again from the Vermont Deli Company. It was not nearly as spicy as my chili, but it was really good, and further served to make the upcoming burger even more disappointing. I should have quit eating while I was ahead.

I got 3 compliments on my Big Lebowski Abide shirt. That thing never fails to be a conversation point. Thanks, Melissa!

All in all, I tried 8+ new beers with 5 winners, 2 decent ones, and 1 loser, plus some opinions that I forgot to write down. Not a bad way to spend an afternoon. It should get even crazier when we go up to the even bigger Vermont Brewers Festival in July. The Beer-hemoth 2 is coming!

-Jon

Good. My font is back to normal.